Florian Wirtz's Liverpool Future: Dietmar Hamann's Concerns
Liverpool did not spend big on Florian Wirtz to watch him jog through games and search for form. Two seasons. That is roughly the window Dietmar Hamann believes the German has to prove he belongs at Anfield – and even that might be generous.
Hamann, speaking to GOAL in association with Betinia NJ, did not dress it up. Asked what Wirtz needs from this campaign and when talk of an exit might start to swirl, the former Liverpool midfielder cut straight to the point: Wirtz has to start playing well. He has to start influencing games.
Right now, Hamann sees a player drifting.
He describes Wirtz as someone who “floats”, a talent who has yet to earn the kind of dressing-room respect that allows creative stars to take defensive shortcuts. The deal is simple at the top level: others will win the ball back for you, but only if, when it reaches your feet, something happens six, seven, eight times out of 10. With Wirtz, Hamann argues, that ratio just is not there.
Instead, the 23-year-old has been chasing back, working hard in the wrong areas. Hamann actually thinks Wirtz is doing too much going backwards, trying to help the team because he knows he is not impacting games enough in the final third. The balance of his game, in Hamann’s eyes, is off. Teammates will only truly buy in when he starts deciding matches going forward.
“He’s not there to win balls,” Hamann stresses. “He’s there to set up goals and score goals.”
Last season offered only flashes. Hamann reckons there were “maybe a handful” of games where Wirtz did what he was signed to do. For a player of his price tag and reputation, that is nowhere near enough.
The physicality of the Premier League always enters the conversation. Hamann acknowledges it. Some elite imports need time to adapt. Some never do. He points to Juan Sebastian Veron, who arrived in England hailed as the best midfielder in the world, lasted a season, and went back to Italy. It happens. Some players cannot do it. Some simply do not want to.
Early on, Hamann urged patience. Give Wirtz two or three months, he said. He called him “too good to fail”. But as the season dragged past Christmas and the spark never really came, his view hardened. The longer the drought went on, the less he believed Wirtz would crack it. Expectations were not easing off. They were rising.
This new campaign has not changed the narrative. Wirtz was withdrawn after an hour in Liverpool’s opening game. For Hamann, the clock is ticking loudly now. If Wirtz does not start grabbing matches in the next three or four weeks, the international break could arrive with a storm behind it.
Hamann expects “a lot of paper talk, a lot of discussions” about whether Liverpool should have signed him at all – a pointless debate, he notes, because the deal is done and the player is there. More importantly, he can imagine Wirtz himself starting to wonder if this move is really for him.
“I think something will happen,” Hamann warns. For a player of Wirtz’s magnitude, his stature, and his transfer fee, the current output “is simply not enough”. Liverpool, he says, will have to find a solution if the situation does not improve – maybe even in the winter window.
The argument over Wirtz’s best role only muddies the picture. Is he a classic No.10? Is he a wide forward cutting in from the left? The debate has followed him since he arrived, and it still has no clear answer.
Hamann is not convinced that position is the main problem. He recalls that a year earlier, the idea was to use Wirtz centrally as a No.10. Now he often starts from the left. Either way, Hamann’s stance is blunt: if your No.10 is not creating chances or scoring enough, someone else has to play. The same goes for a wide forward. Especially now Bradley Barcola has joined and is pushing for minutes.
Training ground stories do not sway him. People inside the club have talked up how good Wirtz looks during the week, but Hamann feels the decisive moment came and went last season. After Christmas, he believes someone should have laid down a clear line: deliver, or the club will have to reassess in the summer, after the World Cup.
“They can’t wait forever,” he says. Wirtz was bought to be “the main man”. Right now, he is anything but.
Liverpool’s hierarchy face an awkward reality. They made a marquee bet on a playmaker who has yet to own the stage. The season is young, the fixtures are coming, and the Anfield crowd is not known for its patience with big-money passengers.
The next few weeks will not just shape Wirtz’s role. They may decide whether his Liverpool story ever truly begins. Or whether it quietly starts counting down to an early end.
